Fact of the day

Information is the most powerful weapon.

Monday

Fact N°
2636

People with higher emotional intelligence are actually worse at detecting liars.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to detect and assess the feelings of other people, but it may actually cloud people's judgment when it comes to lying. A study published in the journal Legal and Criminological Psychology gave 116 participants a questionnaire to determine emotional intelligence, then showed them 20 videos depicting real people making pleas for the safe return of a missing loved one (in half of these cases, the person making the plea would later be found responsible for the loved one's murder or disappearance). People with a higher ability to perceive emotion were worse at spotting when people were lying -- partially, researchers say, because of their overconfidence in their own assessment abilities.

Tuesday

Fact N°
2637

Athletes perceive pain differently.

A metastudy at Heidelberg University in Germany indicates that athletes literally experience pain differently from people with a regular level of activity, though they share the same pain threshold. After examining 331 normally active people and 568 athletes, the study found that athletes had a significantly higher pain tolerance, though the details differed by sport. Endurance athletes had similar levels of tolerance compared to one another, indicating that they might be more physiologically similar overall, while athletes in game sports were more varied. Researchers are hopeful that pain perception can be modified by physical activity in a way that can benefit non-athletes with chronic conditions.

Wednesday

Fact N°
2638

Attractive, popular people swear more in teen lit.

A study published in the journal Mass Communication and Society examined 40 popular teen lit novels and found that the average book contains 38 occurrences of profanity. These occurrences were enough, according to researchers, to net a movie an R-rating, and also accounted for significantly more profanity than one would find in a T-rated video game. Furthermore, the characters who swear the most tend to be the attractive, rich and popular ones.

Thursday

Fact N°
2639

Men tend to find unintelligent women more attractive (at least for a short-term relationship).

A UT Austin study published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior tested the theory that a woman being sexually exploitable is, unconsciously or not, more attractive to men ("exploitability" in evolutionary psychology just refers to the likelihood that a woman could be, in any sense, sexually available -- covering the entire spectrum from willingness to coercion). Researchers asked study participants to list cues, traits and characteristics that signify this availability. The 88 signs the participants came up with included items like "attention-seeking," "tight clothing," "sleepy" and "unintelligent." Researchers then compiled images of women expressing these signs and asked a new group of men to rate their attractiveness. The men noted that some women -- sleepy, intoxicated, unintelligent -- were more exploitable, but they also rated these women as more attractive and ideal for the purposes of a fling. Notably, though, they rated these same women as less desirable for long-term relationships.

Friday

Fact N°
2640

Personality traits can account for longevity even more than actual habits.

Researchers have previously theorized that genetic makeup is often a factor in longevity, but a new study published in the journal Aging examined 243 centenarians and found that their most prominent common ground was actually in their personality traits. They were optimistic and easygoing; they also tended to be and less neurotic than the population at large. Furthermore, a related study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society found that centenarians often share the same unhealthy habits of everyone else, eating badly and smoking at the same rates as the rest of the population.

Saturday

Fact N°
2641

Being exposed to black and white makes people more judgmental.

A study detailed at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science asked 111 participants to read a fictional story about a man who stole life-saving medication (that he couldn't afford) for his wife. For some participants, the story was bordered by a black-and-white checkerboard pattern, while others saw a gray border, and still others saw a blue-and-yellow checkerboard. People tended to be more judgmental when they read the black-and-white checkerboard version; the other groups were basically the same. Another experiment, again using the same three border possibilities, asked people to rate the immorality of various behaviors (like smoking). Again, the black-and-white group was more judgmental in its outlook.

A UCLA study published in the Journal of Physiology indicated that a long-term diet high in fructose adversely affects the brain's ability to learn and store information. Fructose is a naturally occurring fruit sugar, but it's also an omnipresent food additive. The average American consumes 47 pounds of cane sugar a year and 35 pounds of high-fructose corn syrup (which is part glucose and part fructose). Researchers fed two groups of rats a fructose solution instead of water for six weeks. One group was also fed omega-3 fatty acids (partially from flaxseed oil). Both groups were trained to run a maze, but after six weeks, the omega-3 group was able to remember the route far better; the group that received only sugar and no omega-3s showed a decline in brain activity and had become more resistant to insulin.